Saturday, September 29, 2012

What a fun little game! Charmed the hell out of me. It's casual, more like an action/puzzle game, but it sure is effective.

It's a steampunk-like world in which everyone is a Russian stacking doll. Charlie Blackmore is a tiny doll who has the ability to stack with other dolls and take control of them. Each doll has a unique ability, which he uses to solve puzzles and rescue his family from an evil baron who's enslaving children.

Puzzles are relatively simple, but still require you to pay attention to your environment. Stacking with random dolls and playing with their special abilities is fun and rewarding. In fact, it's required. You need to know who's around you and what they can do in order to solve the puzzles and move to the next level.

There are multiple solutions to every puzzle, doll sets to find, unique dolls to "collect", pranks you can play. There's a lot of extra things in the game to keep you busy, and they're not just pointless busywork. They're fun to complete!

The style is charming, tongue-in-cheek, and lighthearted. Won't be much of a game for the shooter crowd or adventure game fans looking for a serious challenge, but the game strikes a nice balance between casual challenge and G-rated fun.

I bought this one without even playing a demo. The style and concept won me over. I had to find out how a game of stacking dolls would play out, and it was a fun little game!

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Been hunting for pro markets to send new stories. I don't like looking for markets that happen to fit what I've already written. It's tedious and boring. Confusing, too, trying to figure out what genre my stories fit into and whether or not a certain publication will accept what I've done. Writing is great. Publishing sucks.

Lately I've been trying to write stories for specific markets as I find them. It has worked in the past, but it comes with a pitfall of its own: submitting too quickly.

I think I made a mistake sending a particular story out too soon. This has happened before. I know, because after merely a week or two of writing I think a story is perfect, but when I revisit it months later, after being rejected by at least one publication, I slap myself on the forehead and think this is dull and if I did this and that it would be better!

This string of failures is trying to convince me that every story, from the longest novel to the shortest piece of flash, needs to rest at least three months. You'd think I would learn by now, but I'm getting impatient. I'm tired of waiting. Tired of waiting for something good to happen. I want to make it happen now.

But I won't make the same mistake again, even with flash fiction. I have to restrain myself, let the stories rest a while longer, then shop around for the right market instead of sending them to the first paying market I find.